21 comments:

When those two murderous thugs lost their lives trying to massacre others a great cheer should have been heard throughout the land.____________________________

Chris Matthews said that Geller & Co. had set a mouse trap, and that the contest was to see who could draw the most offensive cartoon. He was absolutely contemptuous.My opinion is that the winner illustrates the point that this really is about taking a stand for free speech and against terrorism, and contradicts and exposes the liberal media's group think.

A few years ago, I invited Pamela Geller to visit the class that I teach about “culture wars” in the United States. Geller had recently spearheaded a campaign to block the construction of a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center attacks. I wanted my students to understand why.

Moments into her remarks, the answer became clear: Pamela Geller is an anti-Islamic bigot who couldn’t care less about the facts. Geller said the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” was just the tip of a gigantic plot to “Islamicize” America. She warned that states and localities might adopt Sharia law, which would legalize polygamy and child marriage. And all of that would happen with the blessing of the “pro-Muslim” President Obama, whom Geller said could be a closet Muslim himself.

Geller left a comment. She linked to the video of her talk. She said none of those things.

https://youtu.be/4zQq6kMAwWs

Yet people will take the professor's remarks as gospel, even when false. The myth is reinforced until it becomes the reality. What better way to silence someone that call him or her a bigot.

In terms of wanting to advance the debate, it is irrelevant whether Pamela Geller is or isn't a bigot. What matters is that everything she does pushes away the very people who need to be listening. Without those people, it is impossible to take the arguments and ideas into the areas where they might have a useful impact.You need to engage people who self-identify as liberals. They are the people who preside over the cultural institutions that matter.

Can you clarify what you mean by "everything she does?" Right now it seems to me that the attaching of "uber-conservative, Islamophoic, racist bigot" to her identity is the most relevant thing driving away the "beautiful people." (BTW, I hear she is a member of the women's right to choose camp.) Isn't giving or denying credibility on the basis of one's identity part of the problem?

I think anyone who is engaged in these issues in the public- sphere experiences being labeled as those sorts of things. The reason Pamela Geller will never be taken seriously - and therefore neither will her message - is because she is considered an intellectual lightweight.The people who do get listened to , however grudgingly, are seen as serious intellectual voices.

I meant serious intellectual voices who are brave enough to take abuse for speaking out on this subject:Aayan Hirsi Ali, Nick Cohen, Douglas Murray, Niall Ferguson etc.

You are quite right in saying, that for the most part, we are saddled with an intellectual class that is failing to be able to deal with these issues. Failing on a catastrophic scale.Most of them should be ashamed of themselves.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was disinvited by Brandeis University on account of all her "hate speech." Ms. Ali has taken a hits from the media elite types, including Nicholas Kristof of the NYT (surprise!). Niall Ferguson has also gotten his share of "the treatment."I must agree with oldschooltwentysix that Geller is taken quite seriously as a threat against the "narrative."

Yes that's true. They do get their share of " the treatment." But they also get platforms to speak in academic institutions and the opportunity to write comment in very important newspapers and journals. Not all , but some. Niall Ferguson is a Harvard professor. He writes pieces for the London Times. He makes programmes for the BBC. Aayan Hirsi Ali recently wrote a comment piece in the Times. Nick Cohen writes in the Observer and in Standpoint magazine, and in the Spectator blogs. John Ware, is a documentary maker.Maajid Nawaz, stood as a candidate for the UK Liberal Democrat party, in Hampstead and Kilburn. He is an ex- member of an Islamic extremist group. He knows what he is talking about. He gets respect; and a lot of abuse. But he is making a difference. He works to counter extremism.Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph.Etc.

Another point is:Most of those people are commentators on a range of topics. They are established in their fields. Because, for example, Niall Ferguson is a respected authority on history and economics, he has a wide audience of people who are more likely to listen to him when he speaks about Islamism. Because Nick Cohen writes about politics - and,from the left - he is more likely to reach a wider audience when he writes about the threat of Islamic extremism. If people trust that they will find themselves sometimes in agreement with commentators - or at least be interested in their opinions - there is a greater possibility of their being open to listening to them on more contentious subjects.

k,As far as it goes I agree with you, and it's my own tendency as well to trust in those voices, and I actively seek them out. Geller is more a concerned citizen activist type plugging along in her own way. She has no credentials, as it were, that I know of, but I can't fault her for trying to engage people in that which she cares passionately about. She has to be creative to get people's attention. All I can do is to weigh what she says and what she does and judge for myself without regard for how she is portrayed by others. If I had to form an opinion about Ayaan Hirsi Ali based on what her many detractors say about her I'd have no idea of the real Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She was disinvited to speak at Brandeis, because she was misrepresented and labeled, and most if not all the support for that came from people only knew what they were told about her. I'm quite tired, and rambling. Thanks for indulging me.

Jeff,Really agree that it is vitally important to make one's own mind up about people based on what they actually have said and done. And not what you hear coming from the wide variety of voices that will be exercising themselves in smears, untruths and general denunciations. It does seem to be an unfortunate feature of modern public discourse. Particularly on certain issues.There's a wonderful phrase from an American commentator ( I'm tired, too, and ,stupidly, can't remember his name),who once referred to the ' liberal' New York Times types, as " The herd of independent minds."

I suspect what the Chris Matthews of the world mean is is that if you want to be taken seriously, then you have to kill Americans. Everything else is posing. Of course the flaw in that argument is that people who do kill Americans are then 'taken seriously' and we're told to seriously consider the merits of their desire to kill Americans. Would that we could watch followers of The Religion of Plague blow up the Capitol if only to watch Chris Matthews's spit flecked lips tell us it's the GOPs fault.

Well, here we are at beautiful Tims Ford Lake just outside of Lynchburg, Tennessee!

Tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM we're meeting our guide who will take us out on his boat for bass, i.e, striped bass, largemouth bass and the smallmouth variety.

As for Geller, she is, of course, an activist, not an intellectual... although certainly a highly intelligent individual.

If she is off-putting to some people it is - as far as I can tell - for two reasons. The main reason is that she has been effectively demonized by those who think that opposition to al-sharia represents "racism." The other reason is that she tends to be very blunt in her views and she, therefore, sometimes angers those who disagree with her.

What matters, tho, is that people are finally starting to wake up, in part because of ISIS, to the danger of Islam as a political movement.

Mike is out hiding in a boat in the middle of Tennessee because he posted that cartoon!He figured he would surround himself with some "good ole boys" for when the islamic fascists come looking for him.He is setting a trap just like Geller did!

After reading your comment I walked out onto the porch of our cabin where Laurie was reading a book and absorbing the beauty of the lake and the trees and the quiet and the sunshine and said, "Pitt, one of the regulars, tells me that I am hiding in the middle of a lake in Tennessee surrounded by rednecks because I am terrified of the Taliban!"

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Quote of the Whenever:

It is not that most progressives are anti-Semitic. They aren't. It's that they don't get it, they don't care, and they very much want you to shut the fuck up. - Michael Lumish